Alarmingly the fact that Riot August truly believes that his analysis is accurate in terms of Swain's solo lane presence being successful is alarmingly worrying and disingenuous to the community. He makes the classic statistical mistake of correlation is not causation.

While those pretty graphs try to depict the Swain rework in a positive light.

1. What about the fact that Swain got updated visuals leading to a higher playrate? Was this factored in and how do you measure this compared to the actual rework of abilities? Hint- You can't differentiate the two...

2. The sample size on mid is too small and in high elo the winrate is only 50%, while support has a significantly higher winrate indicating that Swain has almost been relegated to support due to his health stacking abilities. The fact that you have such a small dedicated base of players in mid and top, and he only averages 50% indicates that it may not be even be worth picking him up compared to other champions out there like Garen/Darius who have a 50% winrate AND a higher pick rate potentially indicating the dedicated few do a significantly better job than Swain.

3. The fact that Riot August has the balls to say, "If you want to say he's not fun in mid that's fine, but saying he's weak just isn't correct. If you play him mid you will win games." It really shows his detachment to the community and Swain players. If Swain is not fun in lane its Riot's job to make him fun. The old drain tank Swain is gone and replaced with a former shade of himself.

3a. Realistically, if this was an isolated case with Swain being the only champion in the game it would make perfect sense. But when you have champions like Darius and Garen who literally face role with less mechanics, Riot August's analysis literally should be thrown out of the door. Riot clearly has shown favoritism over certain champions over others and that needs to be looked at.

His analysis - https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/g0uu9d/riot_august_on_swain_player_engagement_after_his/